Winds Down Trees, Poles, Disrupt Power

Chilly Arctic winds tore through Southern California over the weekend, downing power poles like match sticks, knocking out electricity to thousands of homes, littering streets with tons of debris and raising concerns about shelter for the homeless.

The winds were clocked at 50 to 60 m.p.h. in several areas, with gusts up to 80 m.p.h. reported in parts of the San Bernardino Valley.

Hardest hit was the San Bernardino County city of Rancho Cucamonga, where winds exceeding 60 m.p.h. blew down 80 power poles along a 1 1/2-mile stretch of Baseline Road, officials said. At least two of those poles fell on cars, but no injuries were reported, a sheriff’s official said Sunday.

One After Another

“They came down just like dominoes,” city maintenance supervisor Bob Zetterberg said of the line of power poles. “It looks like a war zone out here.”

Carol Bowman, co-manager of the Alta Vista Mobile Home Community estimated that 80% of the 186 homes in the park were damaged. And, like many areas of the city, the park lost power.

“It’s cold here,” Bowman said. “We are a family park and there is no heat for the babies and no cooking.”

Bowman said a Southern California Edison Co. spokesman said it could be two days before the power is restored.

Los Angeles’ homeless also were forced to endure more cold than usual. The city invoked a Stage 1 alert for the homeless Sunday because temperatures were predicted to fall to about 40 degrees overnight. Such alerts, which are triggered automatically when temperatures dip to below 40 degrees in clear weather and 50 degrees in rain, call for housing vouchers to be distributed to the homeless.

This is the sixth time that the alert has been called this winter.

Late Sunday, city officials decided to open two additional shelters as well.

“We’re going to open two recreation facilities, one in the (San Fernando) Valley, and one in Venice, where we believe there is an additional need beyond available beds,” Deputy Mayor Mike Gage said.

The Red Cross was to operate the shelters, at the Lakeview Terrace Recreation Center in the Hansen Dam area, and at the Oakwood Recreation Center in Venice. Gage said the shelters will remain open as long as temperatures remain low and an insufficient number of beds appears to be available at other facilities.

He said the mayor’s office also notified Los Angeles Police Department officials of the shelter openings so officers could inform people on the streets of the availability of space. Two vans were provided to ferry the homeless to the shelters.

Los Angeles County has been operating a similar program off and on in colder areas over the last three weeks, said Verta Nash, administrator of the county’s homeless policy development. Nash said she expects the program to continue at least through this week because more cold weather is expected.

Pat Cooper, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times, explained that California was caught between a high-pressure area centered off the Oregon coast and a vigorous low-pressure area over New Mexico.

“Think of a high pressure as a dome of air, and a low pressure as a sinking hole of air,” she said. “And the gradient between these two systems is pretty stiff. That means that the air will fall fast--the wind will blow hard--from the high to the low, just the way water will fall from high to low ground.”

What most Southern California residents saw of the windstorm was litter from literally thousands of tree limbs that damaged cars, roofs, and gardens and made driving through many neighborhoods difficult.

Christmas decorations blew down in Beverly Hills. Freeway signs snapped off poles in Altadena. People running Christmas tree lots vainly tried to keep their trees standing, but most ultimately gave up and laid the trees down to protect them from the powerful gusts.

Storefront windows in Hollywood, Pasadena and elsewhere were shattered by the winds, which first began to kick up late Saturday afternoon. Outdoor furniture was blown off patios and into flower beds. Empty trash cans rattled down streets.

The wind tossed about something much larger in Altadena. A helicopter parked above Chaney Trail was blown about 10 feet down a hillside, apparently before dawn Sunday, said Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Greg Lee.

Southern California Edison leased the chopper from a private firm. Officials closed Chaney Trail until the aircraft could be removed today. No damage estimate was available.

Power to downtown Long Beach was knocked out Sunday afternoon after a fallen tree touched power lines at Spring Street and Long Beach Boulevard. The Police Department and City Hall went to emergency power, and officers were dispatched to direct downtown traffic.

In Arcadia, the Los Angeles State and County Arboretum was forced to close Sunday after wind left the park littered with branches. Several large eucalyptus and oak trees, including a large old spreading oak that was a visitor favorite, crashed during the high winds, park tour guide George Reuter said.

“This storm measures up there with the worst,” Reuter said. “It’s pretty bad.”

Winds began diminishing in most areas Sunday afternoon and were forecast to die down further overnight. The high temperature at the Los Angeles Civic Center reached only 58 degrees after an overnight low of 48.

And it was dry, with relative humidity ranging from 13% to a high of only 19%.

It was expected to be colder Sunday night and this morning. Overnight lows of about 40 were forecast for the downtown area, with temperatures in the middle to upper 30s in the valleys, the weather service said.

The mercury will peak around 60 today at the Civic Center.

A spark blown out of a chimney by strong winds touched off a blaze that spread quickly, gutting two homes and damaging two others in a hilltop neighborhood in the Eagle Rock area. No one was injured.

The fire started at about 11 a.m. in the 4500 block of El Reposo Drive. Fifty Los Angeles firefighters extinguished it an hour later. The four homes sustained more than $300,000 in damage, Battalion Chief Clark Cornwell said.

Many of about 60 homes in the neighborhood have wood shingle roofs, a key factor in the extensive damage, Cornwell said.

“Wood shingle roofs definitely contributed to the fire damage. Really, we were very fortunate to stop it where we did in this wind,” Cornwell said.

Peter Kushdilian, his wife and two children had just set up their Christmas tree when he saw smoke coming out of a light fixture and heard a neighbor’s alarmed knock at the door.

“We got out fast,” said Kushdilian. “I’m just crushed. Just destroyed.”

Damage was estimated at $160,000.

The second house, whose owners were not home, sustained about $150,000 in damage, officials said. The other two houses had $2,400 in roof damage.

Cornwell said fire personnel planned to walk the neighborhood Sunday afternoon reminding residents that the city requires spark arresters on all chimneys, and to inspect and replace defective arresters.

The San Bernardino County city of Chino had a unique fire problem. Fire Department Battalion Cmdr. Tom Maxham said high winds touched off at least half a dozen manure fires Saturday night and Sunday in the city’s dairy area, one of the largest in the United States.

Area fertilizer companies keep large mounds of manure on hand; decomposition deep within stacks creates heat, which was fanned into flames by strong winds, Maxham explained. Firefighters quickly extinguished the flames and no one was injured and no buildings were damaged.

“Then we got to go out and put water on them,” one firefighter said. “It’s a dirty job.”

Edison spokesman Joe McDonough said 370,000 homes and businesses had lost power for varying periods of time since Saturday night.

Tree branches falling onto lines were responsible for some of the outages, but in many cases the strong winds alone were to blame, he said.

Intermittent outages also were reported Sunday in Santa Barbara, Ventura, Thousand Oaks and Valencia, he said.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power crews also worked overtime to restore power in the city. Spokesman Ed Freudenburg said 50,000 customers had suffered power outages since Saturday morning. The San Fernando Valley was most heavily affected.

“We’ve had reports of neighborhood outages virtually every place in the city,” Freudenburg said.

While the forecast for diminishing winds was welcome news to most, it was cause for further concern for the state’s agricultural areas in Central and Southern California.

The temperatures ranged from a low of 24 to 32 Saturday night and early Sunday morning in the Central Valley, National Weather Service meteorologist Willis Huxman said.

Susceptible Products

The most susceptible crops grown this time of year are citrus fruit and avocados, which need protection when temperatures drop below the mid-20s, Huxman said.

The winds, which mix colder ground-level air with warmer air above, mostly spared Southern California from the crop-damaging cold, Huxman said. But that situation was expected to change Sunday night with the dying winds.

“We’re forecasting temperatures in the low 20s. It’ll freeze the inside of the fruit if the temperatures stay for any length of time,” Huxman said.

Times staff writers Patt Morrison and Nieson Himmel in Los Angeles and Louis Sahagun in Riverside-San Bernardino also contributed to this article.